* South Korea's National Assembly Tuesday passed a bill to appoint a permanent special counsel to investigate insurrection charges against President Yoon Suk-yeol, as well as a resolution calling for Yoon's immediate arrest over his botched martial law declaration.
* Opposition lawmakers on Tuesday filed a no-confidence motion against Jagdeep Dhankhar, chairman of the Indian parliament's upper house and India's vice president.
* Indonesia's President Prabowo Subianto called on Tuesday for more efficient government spending amid expected economic challenges caused by rising geopolitical tensions.
* Ghanaian President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has vowed to ensure a seamless transfer of power after Ghana's Electoral Commission (EC) declared John Dramani Mahama the winner of the just-concluded presidential election.
* French President Emmanuel Macron will visit Warsaw on Thursday to give a rundown on talks with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Paris last weekend, Poland's prime minister said on Tuesday.
* Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum reiterated on Monday that "Mexico is a free, sovereign and independent country" in response to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's suggestion that Mexico and Canada should be annexed to the United States due to the subsidies they had received.
* Austria will drop its veto on Bulgaria and Romania fully joining the border-free Schengen area, its interior ministry said on Monday. This will remove the last roadblock to the European Union (EU) interior ministers' approval of the two countries' full entry into the Schengen area at a meeting in Brussels on Thursday.
* Russia moved a step closer towards recognising the Taliban government of Afghanistan on Tuesday as parliament voted in favour of a law that would make it possible to remove the Taliban from Moscow's list of banned terrorist organisations. Parliament's lower house, the Duma, approved the bill in the first of three required readings, Interfax news agency said.
* Singapore's Ministry of Manpower announced an update to the Progressive Wage Model (PWM) for the security sector on Tuesday, with a wage increase for part-time and ad-hoc security officers set to take effect from 2026 to 2028.
* Russia's law enforcement and security services have thwarted 190 terrorist attacks since the start of 2024, local media reported on Tuesday, citing the National Anti-Terrorism Committee (NAC) of Russia.
* The Netherlands tightened border controls on Monday as part of the government's efforts to address irregular migration and human trafficking.
* The European Commission has approved Estonia's 2.6 billion euros (2.8 billion USD) program to support offshore wind farms by offering these power plants a guaranteed price for the electricity they produce.
* France has begun to withdraw its military forces from Chad, starting with the departure of fighter jets from the base in N'Djamena, the French Ministry of Armed Forces announced on Tuesday.
* Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa on Monday reaffirmed his commitment to fight corruption as he received the 2024-2028 national plan for public integrity and the fight against corruption.
* Dutch police have arrested three people following an explosion that killed six people and injured four in an apartment building in The Hague, the police said on Tuesday.
* Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to testify Tuesday for the first time in his trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust charges. His testimony will begin in an underground room in the Tel Aviv District Court after being moved from Jerusalem for security considerations.
* Bashar al-Assad's decision to "withdraw from performing his duties as Syria's head of state is personal," Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by local media on Tuesday.
* Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have expressed their determination to continue bilateral interactions and collaborations, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said early Tuesday in a statement.
* UN humanitarians on Monday described the situation in Syria as chaotic and fluid, with more than 16 million Syrians in need of assistance.
* Turkey reopened the Yayladagi Border Gate with Syria on Tuesday, after an 11-year closure, to address the anticipated border congestion from Syrian refugees wishing to return home. The gate, located in Hatay Province, was shut in 2013.
* Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 34 Palestinians overnight and on Tuesday, medics said, as Israeli tanks pushed into areas in central and southern parts of the enclave.
* An Israeli military spokesperson said on Tuesday Israel was not intervening in Syria beyond taking steps to protect its borders and preventing strategic weapons from falling into hostile hands, and he denied that Israeli forces had advanced towards Damascus.
* A gang of gunmen kidnapped more than 50 women and children in a raid on Kakin Dawa village in Nigeria's northwest Zamfara state, police and residents said.
* Indonesia's Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto expressed his confidence on Tuesday that the country will achieve its projected economic growth rate of 5.2 percent in 2025.
* The World Bank has trimmed the Philippines' gross domestic product (GDP) growth forecast this year to 5.9 percent from 6 percent due to weaker-than-expected growth in the third quarter, its latest Philippines Economic Update showed Tuesday.
* Russia's oil and gas budget revenues grew by 25.7 percent year on year in the first 11 months of 2024, the Russian Finance Ministry said Monday. The revenues amounted to 10.34 trillion rubles (about 102.8 billion USD), the ministry said in a report, adding that the increase was mainly driven by a rise in prices for Russian oil.
* Cambodia exported products worth 23.93 billion USD in the first 11 months of 2024, up 16.8 percent over the same period last year, said a report from the General Department of Customs and Excise released on Tuesday.
* Egypt's core inflation rate slowed to 23.7% year-on-year in November from 24.4% in October, the central bank said on Tuesday.
* Malaysia's industrial production index (IPI) rose by 2.1 percent year-on-year in October, spurred by steady output growth in the manufacturing sector, official data showed Tuesday.
* Some 2.5 gigawatts (GW) of French power production was disrupted by a strike by workers at nuclear and hydro facilities operated by state-owned power giant EDF on Tuesday, data from the company showed.
* President Daniel Noboa said on Tuesday there would be no more power outages in Ecuador from Dec. 20. The South American nation has struggled with an energy crisis that has led to power outages of up to 14 hours a day in recent months.
* Business confidence has significantly improved in South Africa since the formation of the Government of National Unity (GNU) in June 2024, the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SACCI) said on Tuesday.
* The World Trade Organization's (WTO) Goods Trade Barometer released on Monday indicates that global goods trade continued to expand at a moderate pace in the fourth quarter of 2024.
* Global airline body IATA forecast on Tuesday industry-wide 2025 revenue of more than a trillion dollars and record passenger numbers, despite what its chief Willie Walsh said were "unacceptable" difficulties in securing new planes.
* South Sudan, in collaboration with United Nations (UN) agencies, on Tuesday announced plans to vaccinate 150,000 people in northern Renk County, Upper Nile State, in response to a cholera outbreak that has been ongoing since October.
